Sexual jealousy and agression

Sexual jealousy and agression

1. Basic idea

   • Evolutionary theory suggests that aggression is a behaviour that is hard wired into our genes as it served ad adaptive advantage to our ancestors
   • Sexual jealousy
     • male aggresive behaviour towards women is explained by the gender differences in reproductive strategies.
     • As a male cannot be 100% sure if his paternity and will be concerned about cuckoldry he will use strategies to ensure that the female remains faithful to him so he will not be using his resources bringing up another mans child,
     • Aggressive strategies such as direct guarding ( making sure the female had little contact with other men) and negative inducements (threats of violence)
     • Uxorocide
       • Another way of ensuring the mate is faithful it to provide benefits that will make the relationship attractive to the female.
       • however if the male doesnt have access to resources then this is when they are more likely to resort to violence.
       • This violence may lead to uxorocide (wife killing) which according to Daly and Wilson may be unintentional and an outcome of their evolutionary drive to control rather than kill

2. AO2 and IDA

   • Shackleford
     • Showed support for mate retention
     • A large sample of men and women completed a questionnaire (mate retention inventory)
     • He concluded that males used two main types of mate retention , firstly they shouted at their partners for looking at other males and used direct guarding . Secondaly emotional bullying e.g making them feel guilty by threatening to kill themselves.
     • Furthermore
       • Buss and Shacklewood found that men who suspected that their partners were likely to be unfaithful to them were more likely to be violent towards them.
       • As well as supporting the model it has practical application as well as they suggest that mate retention strategies may lead to more violent attacks in the future.
   • Methodological evaluation
     • Many of the studies used to investigate this are correlational and self report techniques
       • Cannot assume cause and effects
       • Although some people may be more truthful on self report techniques as they arent directly telling someone and are generally anonymus, other lie to make themselves look better to the reseacher, this the social desirability bias.
   • Unfalsifiable
     • Being evolutionary explanation there is no way to prove that this is what actually happened on the plains of Africa.
   • Reductionist
     • Also ignores social and cultural aspects of behaviour and therefore is reductionist as it focuses to much on the nature side of sexual jealously rather than the nurture.